原创 Variations in user manual writing style

I recently blogged about the worst oscilloscope manual of all time.. I've particularly enjoyed the feedback quoting from real-world manuals, such as "...the on-screen lathy rectangle shapes represent the front panel keys..." and "...turn the 'Universal' knob when holdoff time have been to max or min value, now the system will clew this information."

It's hard to argue with statements and instructions like this (how can you argue with something if you don’t know what it means?). And then another reader shared as follows:

I work in Switzerland and lately I've been dealing with a number of manuals/datasheets written by German companies. At first I despaired at understanding their statements and my coworkers asked me to stop my cursing, when I hit upon the secret. The trick is to read the manuals with English vocabulary but with the grammar rules of the original language! Now the sentences actually make a lot of sense. Of course, I don't speak Chinese or Japanese so most manuals still don't make sense but it's something...

In turn, this reminded me as to how different countries employ different writing styles in their English-language user manuals based on the rules of grammar associated with their native tongue.

In the case of user manuals written in English by native German speakers, for example, one tends to see things like "You will plug the probes into the analog inputs. Then you will set the vertical scale to the correct value. Then you will…" The reason I've put the "wills" in italics here is that recollect the emphasis in my German friends' voices when I've arrived at parties to be greeted with expressions like: "You have arrived! You will enjoy yourself!"

By comparison, I always find manuals written in English by the folks in Israel to have a very Shakespearian quality. You can almost read them like a play:

Character 1: "But where are the variables?" you ask.

Character 2: "Ha! The variables are over here!"
{Actor throws curtains apart to reveal the variables}

Some of the more interesting manuals I've run across in my time are those that have been created by Japanese and German companies working in concert to provide products to an English-speaking audience. The way this often works is that the native Japanese speakers in Japan create the first pass of the manual in German. Then they ship the product and the manual to their German counterparts, who proceed to translate the poor little scamp from Japanese-German into English.

How about you? Have you noticed any interesting "speech patterns" in manuals based on the grammar rules from their country of origin? Also, have you come across any multi-step translations like the "Japanese > German > English" path I discussed above?